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Sunday, November 16, 2014

Ok, so I jumped on the early Christmas decorating bandwagon. In the past I never decorated until the day after Thanksgiving. This is the day my whole family gets together and cuts down our trees. This year I decided to start early and here is why. One, I LOVE Christmas and never feel like I get to enjoy my decorations long enough. Two, I figured I can pick at them a little at a time. However, the tree will not go up until after Thanksgiving so I feel like it will still be special. This is a somewhat new addition this year.

The new addition piece is the chalkboard printable. I ordered a number of these downloadable Christmas printables from the Caravan Shoppe. Their whole pack is $12 and includes a ton of great stuff! You can find their Christmas pack here. You just need to bring the files to your local Office Max and ask them to print them on their contractor printer (where they print blue prints for contractors). It only costs a few dollars. I found an old gold frame of my mothers and spray painted it white. I then am able to use it for all sorts of chalkboard printables. Easy way to decorate for Christmas on the cheap!

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Okay, so this post is a year in the making, but with Christmas right around the corner I couldn't help but share our Christmas time Gender reveal party from last year. We were so excited to find out the gender of our baby and couldn't wait to share the news with our family. Here we are before heading to the ultrasound and our prediction!

We had the ultrasound on a Thursday morning and then we had to wait 9 torturous hours to share the news. I am not going to lie I had no idea how hard keeping that secret would be. I tried to avoid people most of the day, but eventually met up with my mom so we could run a few errands for the party and it was so hard, but I just kept referring to her as the baby. I think it helped that I thought it was a boy for so long and was calling the baby a him for weeks before. On to the big reveal. I searched Pinterest for options and found a number of fun ones, balloons in a box, silly string, cakes. However, I never found one that felt quite right. So, I started brain storming ideas that would involve the season, Christmas!! I decided to decorate a second Christmas tree with both pink and blue ornaments and lights. I was absolutely in love with what I like to refer to as the baby tree.

Every morning I would just head downstairs, plug it in and enjoy my breakfast, so happy! Back to the game plan. We plugged in both set of lights to plug ins that had a remote control for it. We turned off the tree, counted to three and turned on just the pink lights (we also had the white lights as well since the tree was pre lit).

As an added bonus I ordered these amazing flutter feti sticks for my nieces and nephews so they could join in on the action. It was so fun for them and made for a large pink explosion. SOOOOO FUN!! You can get the flutter feti sticks HERE. I absolutely love all of the pictures from the event. You can see reactions of others and the smiles on their faces. The hubbys family is all boys so it was exceptionally exciting for all of them. For the party I decided to keep decorations simple since the house was already decorated for Christmas, but I added a few fun things.

First, I made these little mustaches and lips on a stick for guests to make their vote. Very easy to do I just printed a picture of a mustache and lips, cut them out and used fabric glue to attach the sticks to the back. I bought pre dipped white chocolate oreos and drizzled half with blue and half with pink candy melts.

The cake is of course from the very talented Cakes by Gail. It turned out so adorable, she never disappoints.

Water bottle labels were from Fine Dandy Printables and they have a ton of matching items if you need them.

The extra large balloons came from the wonderful Tom Kat Studios and I loved how they added to the party and made for fun pictures once the gender was revealed. Okay, that was a long one. This may have been my favorite party of all time. Only because it combined both our friends and our family and of course our little peanut!! It felt like such a loving, fun and exciting time. We are so blessed by each and every person that attended!!!

What are some of the ways you have shared gender with family and friends?